Simple ─ that's the word most often used to describe the 1950s ─ when we were all kids in Oceanside, New York. Everyone knows when we were in school together, things were not so complicated as they are today. Despite the Cold War, the threat of Communism looming over us and the related shameful and paranoid hysteria in America that was McCarthyism, the beginnings of a violent civil rights movement in the South, and a problem with juvenile delinquency in our cities, the times were, in general, marked with a sense of optimism, prosperity and overall well-being for most of us ─ and simplicity.

According to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and acclaimed historian, David Halberstam (widely believed to be America's leading authority on the 1950s), "In that era of general good will and expanding affluence, few Americans doubted the essential goodness of their society.¼ They were optimistic about the future."

    

 

In no way and at no time was the emphasis on style more apparent than when our roads were ruled by those cool, chrome-plated dinosaurs ─ in cool colors like turquoise and pink with a host of new "power" features and decked with enormous fins and, of course, the chrome ─ lots and lots of chrome.


They were huge cars that got lower, longer, wider, faster and (of course) cooler every year. And it was always so exciting awaiting the dramatically changed, new models unveiled each fall.
    

                   

"Those were the days, my friend
 We thought they'd never end 
We'd sing and dance forever and a day 
We'd live the life we choose 
We'd fight and never lose 
For we were young and sure to have our way."

From our point of view, those certainly were the days, my friend ─ the best days ever to be in high school in America. (And we thought they'd never end.) No other time has been so closely identified with ─ and fondly remembered for ─ its teenage experience and culture. (In fact, linguistic research has demonstrated that even the word, "teenager," was virtually unheard of prior to the 1950s.) During that time, we were asserting a new independence and engaging in our own revolution ─ the teenage revolution ─ from which the world has never recovered.  
    

For the first time in history, we, the teenagers, had some money to spend; we had our own hairstyles, fashions, movies and TV shows, and our own cars (we were so cool_md_clr.gif).

  

And most significant of all, as teenagers, for the first time, we had our very own music, and like the times that produced it, it was much simpler music than our kids have today ─ and much, much more fun!  This brand, spanking new and vibrant music of ours ─ rock 'n' roll music ─ was a powerful force that literally changed the world.  It could not have been anticipated ─ and it could not be stopped (although many tried).

Noted music historian, the late Arnold Shaw (a friend of your webmaster's), wrote in his wonderful book, The Rockin' '50s: 

"[H]istorians ¼   are given to such words as fun, joy and innocence in recalling the songs¼  simpler than they became in the '60s and¼  made for dancing.  But the new generation was seeking to define itself through them¼  an embattled generation, for the Establishment fought the new music with bans, arrests, lawsuits, not to mention actual physical destruction¼ "

  
There was a whole lotta shakin' goin' on as we "defined" ourselves
dancing and dancing and dancing to our sensual and exciting
new music, our young bodies, like bombs bursting red glare, exploding with hot, hormonal fireworks.

At places like the Sunrise Drive-In(we called it the "passion pit" ), we explored and experimented with those new feelings, "sending" each other as we fumbled our way through a series of teenage crushes and awkward romances ─ all the while protesting and struggling to prove to our perplexed parents that we were already grown up enough.

      

And we were


, eating 15¢ hamburgers and reading

  
(or PLAYBOY

 

) magazine.

Yes, like one of our most major heroes, James Dean, we teenagers were all rebels without a cause ─ but all we really wanted to do was have fun.
   

And did we ever!!

 


  
Click on any of the following links for a trip down Memory Lane, U.S.A.  Just a few of the best ones have been selected, but each has links to virtually hundreds of others. And when you are done surfing, be sure to come back to our class site for more stuff.
          

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